Work starts on 200 new car spaces across Chorley town centre

Major work to increase parking capacity across Chorley town centre will get underway in April with more than 200 new spaces being created in the coming months.

The Oak House building will be demolished to extend the Cleveland Street car park, a new car park will be created on Arley Street and an extra level of spaces will be created on Friday Street car park.

The work is part of Chorley Council’s commitment to provide more parking spaces before the Market Walk shopping centre extension is built.

Gary Hall, chief executive of Chorley Council, said: “We’ve listened to shoppers and traders and we know how important it is that we get the car parking sorted before we start building the extension.

“As well as creating these new permanent parking spaces we’re also going to open up another 100 temporary spaces on the Flat Iron in the coming weeks to create as many spaces as we can until work starts on the extension later this year.

“It will also help to offset any spaces lost during the construction of the upper level on the Friday Street car park.”

The programme of work as it stands is:

• Creation of a new 40-space car park on Arley Street, off Stump Lane - work to be started and completed in April

• Demolition of the Oak House building to extend the Cleveland Street car park - the building will start to come down mid-April with the new 47-space car park open in early July

• Friday Street car park to be resurfaced in May with the upper level construction adding approximately 150 spaces - work starts in mid-June and finishing in mid-October. Portland Street car park will change to a long stay car park at the same time.